Friday, 13 June 2014

Putin's Frog-in-a-Pot War

There's an anecdote about a frog in a pot
of water that goes like this: If you put a frog in a pot of hot or boiling
water, it will immediately jump out (or die). But if you put it in a pot of
cold water, and then gradually heat it, the frog won't notice the change in
temperature until it's cooked.

I'm not sure if that's actually true or
not, but it's a useful metaphor for the type of warfare Russian President
Vladimir Putin has now unleashed on Ukraine. The idea is that people tend not
to notice very gradual change, and if the process is carefully managed, people
can be taken from one state of affairs to another, quite different one, without
them even noticing exactly how or when they got there.

Ukraine is now at war. Part of its territory
has already been annexed. Its soldiers are being killed by foreign fighters,
armed and equipped from abroad, and sent to the country to seize key
administrative buildings, military facilities, and even entire, strategically
placed towns. Ukraine has lost control of its eastern border, and foreign tanks
and troops are roaming one of its eastern provinces. All this has happened in the last four months.

But so gradual has this change in the state
of affairs in Ukraine, that there are some who would not even recognize that
Ukraine is, in fact, at war with Russia. It's even difficult to say when this
war broke out: was it with the annexation of Crimea, or with the appearance of
the "little green men" in the peninsula? Was it, as some believe,
when Russian special forces were allegedly sent to steady the Yanukovych regime
as it was rocked by public protests, and activists began to be abducted,
tortured and killed by men speaking "chistiy" (or Russian-accented)
Russian?

What we can say is that things have
definitely been going badly for Ukraine since late February, and things are
still going from bad to worse. Few would have thought, in those dreadful days
after the ouster of Yanukovych, that Ukraine would soon lose Crimea to Russia -
but it did. Then there were the anxious last two weeks of March, when it seemed
that mainland Ukraine might be invaded. Then in mid April the "little
green men" turned up in the Donbas, and buildings started to be seized,
and the hitherto unremarkable town of Sloviansk became the center of a
pro-Russian rebellion, and a humiliating thorn in the side of the weak and
disorganized Ukrainian armed forces. Abductions and killings, of journalists
and activists, became commonplace. We learned the names of some of the Russian
mercenaries behind the seizure of parts of the Donbas. Then a battalion of Chechen
fighters appeared, and tried to take over Donetsk airport. The bodies of
Russian mercenaries began to be sent back to Russia openly. And now tanks,
stolen from Ukrainian bases in occupied Crimea, are being openly driven around
towns in the east.

This evolution of circumstances, this
gradual turning up of the heat, did not happen naturally – every major event,
from the theft of Crimea to the deployment of Chechen fighters and tanks in the
Donbas, has been carefully, artificially crafted and managed by Russia. Putin,
an old KGB colonel, is conducting this war with lies, propaganda and
subterfuge, and is very carefully and gradually raising the temperature for
Ukraine. Little by little he adds new outrages, or mixes in a new ingredient ("little
green men", Chechens, tanks), to the pot of war in which he is stewing his
neighbor. Sometimes he turns one burner down at little – perhaps a small
redeployment of troops from the border – while tweaking up another slightly -
say by threatening to cut off gas supplies. He calls for peace talks and for
Kyiv to stop its anti-terrorist operation in the east, while at the same time letting
more and more armed men cross the Russian border into Ukraine. But at all times
he is gradually raising the temperature of the conflict.

Putin has proved difficult to predict, but
perhaps, given what we have seen of his tactics in the last few months, we can now
make a cautious prediction: he will continue to conduct this new type of war,
his Frog-in-a-Pot war, until he achieves his aims, or until he is stopped.

Putin has himself alluded to what these
aims might be: the dismemberment of Ukraine and the establishment of a new,
Kremlin vassal state on the territory of Ukraine's south and east, which he
refers to as Novorossiya. He thinks in terms of maps, and it irks him to see
Transdnistria (Moscow's vassal state in Moldova) and his newly conquered Crimea
cut off from Mother Russia. The solution to him is to take a swathe of
Ukraine's south and east, linking all his isolated possessions (and that goes
for Kaliningrad as well: Latvia, Belarus, beware!).

So there probably won't be an all-out
attack and invasion of Ukraine by Russia – a swift, decisive sweep into enemy
territory of the type we have seen in conflicts past. Instead, the situation in
Ukraine will slowly deteriorate, until one day Kyiv will wake up to the
realization that it has lost control of half of its territory, perhaps without
even a single major battle being fought.

However, that's assuming everything goes
Putin's way, and the frog doesn't manage to escape being cooked.

Putin's plans can be foiled if Ukraine can get
his hands off the burners. That means, first of all, securing the border.
Although some progress is reported to have been made, Ukraine has yet to prove
that it has the strength to establish firm control over its frontier with
Russia. But the border must be closed, and kept closed, to stop weapons and men
from Russia getting into Ukraine to cause more and worse havoc. The
anti-terrorist operation must not be stopped, no matter how Moscow protests. If
there is any halt, Russia will simply use the opportunity to consolidate its
position in the Donbas before starting to make mischief anew.

Next, Ukraine must continue to press for
tough sanctions from the West against Russia – sanctions that don't just have
teeth, but sanctions with six-inch razor-edged fangs that can slice and rip
into Russia's exposed and vulnerable financial system, and its flabby industry,
doing them some serious, painful injury. Wars cost money to prosecute, and the
less of it available to Russia the better.

At the same time, Ukraine must work to
reduce its dependency on Russian gas, and make sure it pays a fair price for
the reduced amount it will still have to buy in the near term. For that, it
will need firmer backing from the countries that consume 50% of Russia's gas exports
to the EU (50% of which is delivered through Ukrainian transit pipelines) –
Italy and Germany.

Russia's unfair actions in its undeclared trade
war with Ukraine, which has already been going on for nearly a year, must be referred
to the WTO, and trade sanctions applied and enforced by that organization.

On the diplomatic front, Ukraine must do
everything it can to highlight Russia's international isolation from the
civilized world and its disgraceful position as the leader of a motley pack of
rogue states. Russia must pay a diplomatic price in the United Nations for its aggression.
Little has been achieved on this front since the General Assembly vote condemning
Russia's annexation of Crimea, and that was in March.

The black propaganda campaign waged by
Russia against Ukraine must be more strenuously opposed. All too often,
ridiculous and outrageous lies spewed by the Kremlin-controlled Russian media end
up being parroted by "useful idiot" leftist commentators in the Western
media, distorting Western perceptions of what is actually happening in Ukraine.
Moscow has an army of Internet trolls dedicated to bending Western public
opinion in the direction it wants. Ukraine has to counter this with its own
army of troll slayers. Public initiatives such as www.stopfake.org are doing great work, but
more needs to be done at the government level in Ukraine to counter the
falsehoods emanating from the Russian media.

All of the above, and more, have to be done
to douse Russia's smoldering aggression, and stop the frog getting cooked. In
future, for the frog to escape the pot once and for all (meaning ensuring
Russia can never again threaten Ukraine's very existence as a state), a whole set
of other measures will need to be taken, such as rebuilding and reequipping
Ukraine's army, integrating the country's economy with that of the European
Union, and healing the raw wounds Putin has torn in Ukrainian society by artificially
fostering divisions and mistrust between east and west.

But before all that, Ukraine first has to recognize
that it is indeed a frog in a pot, and that the heat is rising.

4 comments:

Goodness! This list of "ifs" is most discouraging. Let's face it. Ukraine is a divided country in a land accustomed to being ruled by thugs of one stripe or another. All we are seeing now is a rebalancing of powers. The East is a black hole. Western Ukraine will get sucked right back into corruption and the same nefarious activities which have haunted this land for at least the last hundred years. Ukraine does not have the power or money to engage Russia on any level. I'm sorry to sound fatalistic but i really don't think Western Ukraine can last as a principle loving egalitarian and democratic society with one hand tied behind it back. Even with the East out of the picture I'd say their odds are best 50/50. Old habits die hard and an entire new generation have to be re-educated. Most of the people I've met in Kiev do not even really understand the free market system. I think they typically view it as a license to rob or exploit people. In other words, they are soviet thinkers... Ukraine, I believe is the Unluckiest Place on Earth. It will take a lot to change that. I don't think it's really possible. Save what you can. If the Western portion becomes successful and free and the East languishes under Russian control, then the East can reassess and revolt against Moscow. Democracy in the West took about 700 years to blossom where it could; in America. It may take that long in Ukraine, if it ever happens at all.

Disagree completely with your assessment. Western Ukraine has gone through upheavals but there is a new vision for the future. Young Ukrainians want better government without corruption. This dream will be reinforced because it's not just a battle between Russia and Ukraine...but it is also a conflict between Russia and the West. Our Western democracies have to see that what happens in Ukraine matters to the global situation as far as balance of power. Can anyone just go in and take over a country? This cannot be allowed. As for unlucky....if America and the EU begin to let their power slip then they will be losers and fatally wounded. My hope and dream is a prosperous and democratic Ukraine in a new global order..